Kids, Books and Bikes

Years ago, in the period after I burned out on the software business the first time and before my friend Kevin lured me back in with the phone equivalent of Herman Mankiewicz's famous telegram to Ben Hecht - "Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots", Christine and I managed a used bookstore in Duluth, Minnesota. It was wonderful, dusty work that ultimately proved to be incompatible with Christine's lungs and one of the few jobs where it was possible to make even less than I do currently in the non-profit bike world. But books, like bicycles, are wonderful things that kids take to when given the right encouragement and context. Our kids have grown up with both bikes and books.


Christine and I have written and spoken elsewhere about raising carfree kids and today I'm going to write a bit about a few books, old and new, that showcase the simple wonder of riding a bike.


One book that my mom read to me and that Christine read to the boys, is H. A Rey's classic Curious George Rides a Bike. For those of you unfamiliar with the story, it's a wonderful tale of a somewhat irresponsible monkey who fails to deliver the newspapers he's supposed to. Of course, bad things happen to him (he wrecks his bike) but his skill at trick riding allows him to persevere and everything works out in the end. Hmm, OK, maybe that's not a great lesson (being cute and tricky helps you get along in the world!) but it is a classic book and you can tell George is having fun. I recall as a kid it not only got me interested in cycling, it turned me on to origami as well (George made the papers into origami boats instead of delivering them.)


The next book, His Finest Hour by David Neuhaus, is a wonderful "Tortoise and the Hare" story featuring Ralph, the fellow with all the latest whiz-bang stuff and Dudley with his old balloon-tired bike. The delightfully droll delivery and illustrations lovingly list all the gear Ralph brings to the race countered with the simple sentence "Dudley brought his bike." A great little book.



Super Grandpa by David M. Schwartz is a the true tale of 66-year old Gustaf Hakansson who, in 1951, was told by the officials of the Tour of Sweden that he was too old to compete. Hakansson did not take no for an answer and rode 600 miles to the start of the race and then unofficially rode and came in first on the 1000 mile course. This is one of those books that really is a great story for all ages of readers.



It seems that every generation decries "kids these days" with their loud music and funny hair, but I get to work with kids every day at Bike Works and I'm here to tell you that the kids are alright. Every Earn-A-Bike class we can offer fills up. Kids still want to learn and still get a thrill from getting places under their own power.

A couple of days ago I got an email from my son Peter (the little tyke you see in the pictures here is now in his twenties, doing his post-grad work in Ice Physics at the University of Alaska Fairbanks). The email starts out "Hey Old Man". Both our kids feel like they've grown up in an extended version of a Jean Shepherd story and always refer to me as "the old man." Peter goes on to describe how a friend of his is commuting and crashing on "a very old bike shaped object from Walmart with a completely shot to hell drive train that should never be subjected to everyday use by anyone." He wants me to keep an eye open at Bike Works for a suitable bike for his friend. The supply of decent bikes in Fairbanks is poor, so Peter and his pals have pooled some money and when Peter is back down here for Christmas, he's hoping to get a used bike that he'll take north with him on the plane.

As I said before, the kids are alright.

Keep 'em rolling,

Kent

Bike Touring by Raymond Bridge

Raymond Bridge's book, Bike Touring: The Sierra Club Guide to Travel on Two Wheels, is the second, completely revised edition of a book Mr. Bridge originally wrote 30 years ago. In the thirty years since the first edition, some things have changed. We now have Internet forums to discuss our tours, we can track our routes using GPS and theAdventure Cycling Association has mapped out thousands of more miles of routes, but the lure of the open road is still the same.

In this age of Internet wonder, Raymond Bridge has created a book that does the thing that books still do best: he's created a compact, clear guide that condenses a wealth of practical how-to information into a portable, organized form. He explains the various types of bike touring a person might do from commercial tours to roof-to-roof and independent bike camping trips. He discusses a variety of bikes, explaining both fit and function, telling not just what options exist, but why a person might choose one bike or component over another. He explains basic roadside repairs, camping skills and things like the logistics of transporting your bike before and after your tour.

I'm really not the intended audience for a book like this, as I've been traveling by bicycle since before the first edition of this book was new, and yet I still found this book to be wonderfully organized and complete. With a critical eye, I'd find myself asking "yeah, but does he mention alcohol stoves?" Yep, he does, not only mentioning commercial stoves, but pointing his readers to a couple of instruction pages on the Internet for those who like to make their own stuff. This is typical of the book, it is marvelously complete in itself, but it also sends you off on your own journey.

In Bike Touring: The Sierra Club Guide to Travel on Two Wheels, Raymond Bridge has written a marvelous starting point for anyone interested in travel by bicycle. John Lencicki's wonderful drawings are sprinkled throughout the text, adding both clarity and charm to this book. My only complaint with this volume is the cover. This is a book that inspires and enables folks to get out on the road and experience the freedom of two wheels. The text and drawings inside the book capture that far better than the dull photograph of a pannier, water bottle, helmet, map and glove which the Sierra Club chooses for the cover of this book. In this case, don't judge a book by its cover. This one is better. I now have a guide to hand to anyone looking to get out and see the world from the seat of a bicycle.

Ghost Trails

In Ghost Trails, Jill Homer does something very difficult, she tells the story of riding and pushing a bicycle through 350 miles of frozen Alaskan wilderness on the Iditarod Trail. And while the journey itself is epic, what Jill does in this book is far more impressive than simply competing in this difficult race, she never stops being human and she's never afraid to share that humanity with her readers.

As readers, we know that Jill survives this race, but she still manages to tell a page-turner of a story, painting word pictures of the country, the remote cabins that serve as checkpoints, her fellow competitors, the weather and the darkness. But most importantly, she constantly asks, answers and asks again the Talking Heads question, "well, how did I get here?"

She really captures the thoughts that filled her mind on the 350 miles of the trail by recounting tales from her past, the events that made her not a super-human competitor but a human who competes, and completes, on a course that is far less remote now that Jill has taken us along on the journey.

Her humanity shows through in both tears and a wry sense of humor. She questions herself and concludes that she probably wasted too much time training and not enough time buying peanut butter cups. She holds her frozen Camelbak as an "ice baby" and finally thaws it enough to get a single swallow of water. She doubts and...

But there was one other certainty in my mind — the certainty that I could no longer bear the uncertainty. I could no longer linger in limbo. The longer I stalled, the further I sank into dull madness. I was going to have to decide right there whether I was going to push for McGrath or get on a plane back to Anchorage with Ted and never look back. Either way, I would have to accept the consequences. There was no going back to the start, not any more. I knew there was a reason I had planned so diligently for the race, trained all winter for the race, spent all of my free time thinking about the race.

“If only I could remember what that reason was,” I thought as I mounted my bicycle and pedaled into the dark. And with that, I was finally moving down the trail.

Jill takes us all along on that trail and the other trails that lead her to Alaska and that I know will lead her to further adventures. Ghost Trailsis a wonderful book, one that I rationed out like a precious supply of peanut butter cups. It is a book to be savored, a book to remind you that there always is a reason to be moving down that trail, even if you don't remember what that reason was.

Three Men On Wheels

Years ago, I discovered the books of Jerome K. Jerome while poking around in various used bookstores. His most famous book was published in 1889 as Three Men in a Boat and eleven years later Jerome published a sequel to that novel called Three Men on the Bummel. Both books are travel stories describing the adventures of three friends and both works contain some very funny scenes. Since many English speaking readers aren't familiar with the German term "bummel", the later book was published in the US under the title Three Men on Wheels.
Many of the scenes involving bicycles in Three Men on Wheels still ring true today. Here Jerome and his friend discuss saddles:

"Can you think of any saddle ever advertised that you have _not_ tried?"

He said: "It has been an idea of mine that the right saddle is to be found."

I said: "You give up that idea; this is an imperfect world of joy and sorrow mingled. There may be a better land where bicycle saddles are made out of rainbow, stuffed with cloud; in this world the simplest thing is to get used to something hard. There was that saddle you bought in Birmingham; it was divided in the middle, and looked like a pair of kidneys."

He said: "You mean that one constructed on anatomical principles."

"Very likely," I replied. "The box you bought it in had a picture on the cover, representing a sitting skeleton--or rather that part of a skeleton which does sit."

He said: "It was quite correct; it showed you the true position of the--"

I said: "We will not go into details; the picture always seemed to me indelicate."

He said: "Medically speaking, it was right."

"Possibly," I said, "for a man who rode in nothing but his bones. I only know that I tried it myself, and that to a man who wore flesh it was agony. Every time you went over a stone or a rut it nipped you; it was like riding on an irritable lobster. You rode that for a month."

"I thought it only right to give it a fair trial," he answered.

I said: "You gave your family a fair trial also; if you will allow me the use of slang. Your wife told me that never in the whole course of your married life had she known you so bad tempered, so un-Christian like, as you were that month. Then you remember that other saddle, the one with the spring under it."

He said: "You mean 'the Spiral.'"

I said: "I mean the one that jerked you up and down like a Jack-in-the-box; sometimes you came down again in the right place, and sometimes you didn't. I am not referring to these matters merely to recall painful memories, but I want to impress you with the folly of trying experiments
at your time of life."

Here's what Jerome has to say on the subject of "overhauling":

I have had experience of this "overhauling." There was a man at Folkestone; I used to meet him on the Lees. He proposed one evening we should go for a long bicycle ride together on the following day, and I agreed. I got up early, for me; I made an effort, and was pleased with myself. He came half an hour late: I was waiting for him in the garden. It was a lovely day. He said:--

"That's a good-looking machine of yours. How does it run?"

"Oh, like most of them!" I answered; "easily enough in the morning; goes a little stiffly after lunch."

He caught hold of it by the front wheel and the fork and shook it violently.

I said: "Don't do that; you'll hurt it."

I did not see why he should shake it; it had not done anything to him. Besides, if it wanted shaking, I was the proper person to shake it. I felt much as I should had he started whacking my dog.

He said: "This front wheel wobbles."

I said: "It doesn't if you don't wobble it." It didn't wobble, as a matter of fact--nothing worth calling a wobble.

He said: "This is dangerous; have you got a screw-hammer?"

I ought to have been firm, but I thought that perhaps he really did know something about the business. I went to the tool shed to see what I could find. When I came back he was sitting on the ground with the front wheel between his legs. He was playing with it, twiddling it round between his fingers; the remnant of the machine was lying on the gravel path beside him.

He said: "Something has happened to this front wheel of yours."

"It looks like it, doesn't it?" I answered. But he was the sort of man that never understands satire.

He said: "It looks to me as if the bearings were all wrong."

I said: "Don't you trouble about it any more; you will make yourself tired. Let us put it back and get off."

He said: "We may as well see what is the matter with it, now it is out." He talked as though it had dropped out by accident.

Before I could stop him he had unscrewed something somewhere, and out rolled all over the path some dozen or so little balls.

"Catch 'em!" he shouted; "catch 'em! We mustn't lose any of them." He was quite excited about them.

We grovelled round for half an hour, and found sixteen. He said he hoped we had got them all, because, if not, it would make a serious difference to the machine. He said there was nothing you should be more careful about in taking a bicycle to pieces than seeing you did not lose any of the balls. He explained that you ought to count them as you took them out, and see that exactly the same number went back in each place. I promised, if ever I took a bicycle to pieces I would remember his advice.

I put the balls for safety in my hat, and I put my hat upon the doorstep. It was not a sensible thing to do, I admit. As a matter of fact, it was a silly thing to do. I am not as a rule addle-headed; his influence must have affected me.

He then said that while he was about it he would see to the chain for me, and at once began taking off the gear-case. I did try to persuade him from that. I told him what an experienced friend of mine once said to me solemnly:--

"If anything goes wrong with your gear-case, sell the machine and buy a new one; it comes cheaper."

He said: "People talk like that who understand nothing about machines. Nothing is easier than taking off a gear-case."

I had to confess he was right. In less than five minutes he had the gear-case in two pieces, lying on the path, and was grovelling for screws. He said it was always a mystery to him the way screws disappeared.

Thanks to the wonderful work of the people at Project Gutenberg, books such as these, and thousands more, are easily and freely available in electronic form. I get most of my etexts, which I read on my Nokia N800, from Manybooks.net. Manybooks doesn't just have the Gutenberg books, it also has many books and stories by contempory authors who have chosen to release their works under Creative Commons licensing.

Momentum Is Your Friend

My friend Joe "Metal Cowboy" Kurmaskie writes wonderful books that are both funny and wise. His latest book, Momentum Is Your Friend, is the story of Joe bicycling from Portland Oregon to Washington DC with this two sons, second-grader Quinn and five-year-old Enzo, literally in tow. Joe has a reporter's eye for detail, a poet's way with words and a genuine interest in the people he and the boys meet along the road. Over the course of a few thousand miles and a few hundred pages, Joe and the boys take the reader on the ride of a lifetime. I really felt like I'd met the watermelon whiz-kid, the grumpy and grizzled bicycling vet, the midwestern cheerleader in the mysteriously empty town and all the other people too real to be called characters.

But of all the real people in this book, the one we get to know the best is the one telling us this story. This is not a mid-life crisis book but it is a good story, well told, by a man in the midst of his life. With his kids in tow, his wife in grad school and the ashes of his father in a Tupperware bowl tucked somewhere in a pannier, Joe wonders about the things we all wonder about. Am I being a good dad? A good husband? A good son? And can I make it up this hill with this 250 pound contraption? OK, maybe not everyone wonders about that last one.

B. and Roy, a kind-hearted couple in a huge RV voice the concerns of many about Joe and his cute kids, "you wouldn't want anything to happen to them." But Joe explains that this isn't categorically true.

"I want all sorts of things to happen to my children. I want them to smack line drives during clutch moments of baseball games, smell the sweet bite of creosote bushes in the Arizona desert after an August monsoon, eat a pile of messy short ribs dripping in Kansas City's best BBQ sauce, then sleep off their food comas under the whispery shade of a willow tree. I want them to stick up for themselves when it really matters, and someday slow dance with that girl, the one that makes them uncool and cotton-mouthed, at the junior high school mixer. I want them to find themselves at a loss for words from the beauty of the world, and make up fantastical names for constellations under the open sky this summer."

"What I don't want is something horrible happening to them. That's what he really means. It's a small distinction, but, when magnified through the video black magic of Madison Ave. and filtered by the unfounded fears of parents fueled by the nightly news, it's what cheats us all of so much."

Joe and Quinn and Enzo not only survive, they thrive. They remind us all that life is for living and adventure is everywhere if we are not afraid to roll out the door and see what's around the next corner. If momentum is my friend, then I guess that inertia is my enemy. Thanks, Joe for wonderful book that's a kick out the door. I'll see you on the road.
BTW, if you get a chance to see Joe in person go see him. He's a great speaker as well as being a terrific writer and if you buy a book straight from him, he'll sign it. When you buy a book straight from Joe (either in person or via his website at www.metalcowboy.com) 80% of the profits go to Joe's latest venture, Camp Creative. Of course, Amazon and other bookstore sales are a great help as well but Joe's trying to raise a big chunk of money for Camp Creative (details on his website) and direct sales earn more direct cash.